Turkey's Erdogan shows shooting video again, hours after NZ meeting

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan graphically played recordings of New Zealand's worst mass shooting on a valgrally Friday – just hours after the country's foreign minister met him and said he believed the controversial showings was stopped.

New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters arrived in Istanbul on Friday to talk to Erdogan about the footage and comments he has made to shoot 50 people in mosques in Christchurch a week ago, who have condemned New Zealand and Australia.

But Peters emerged from a brief meeting with Erdogan and struck a reconciling tone and said he had not brought up at the meeting some of the most controversial comments made by the Turkish leader at rallies.

He also said he had not asked Erdogan to stop showing the videos.

"I didn't ask the question because I felt I didn't have to ask it because they didn't do it any more," Peters told journalists after attending a meeting of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

Two hours later, Erdogan stopped his speech on an election conversation in the central province of Konya, so the audience could watch the video footage of the shootings the alleged gun had sent on Facebook on March 1

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The video that governments and social media have been trying to take down since the incident was blurry, but the gunshots were heard.

Erdogan seeks to drum up his Islamist anchored AK party in March 31 local elections. He has shown different versions of the video a dozen times during the week, including on Thursday.

"The New Zealand Deputy Prime Minister came with a delegation and we had a chance to speak before we came here. We discussed and agreed what to do," Erdogan's advocates in Konya said without elaborating.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan speaks during an emergency meeting of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Istanbul, Turkey on March 22, 2019. REUTERS / Murad Sezer

& # 39; COFFEE COMMENTS DO NOT CONTRIBUTE [19659012] massacres in New Zealand were carried out by a lonely gun in two mosques. Australia's Brenton Tarrant, 28, a suspected white supremacist, has been charged with a murder after the attack and is likely to face more charges.

In rallies over Turkey, Erdogan has since called on New Zealand to restore the death penalty and said that Turkey would make the suspect attacker pay if that country did not. Referring to a "manifest" sent online by the attacker, he said that Turkey would return "in coffins" all who tried to take the fight to Istanbul.

Peters told reporters that he had not dealt with these comments with Erdogan because he did not think it would serve a "long-term peaceful purpose" and added that he had received assurances about the security of New Zealanders visiting Turkey.

In an address to the leaders of Muslim countries that attended the OIC meeting, including Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Turkey, Peters New Zealand defended the answer to the shooting and said the perpetrator would spend his life in prison .

"This person faces the full power of the New Zealand law and will spend the rest of his life isolated in a New Zealand prison," Peters said, adding later that "misinterpretations" in the days following the admission had been cleared up after his meeting with Erdogan and OIC.

Before leaving Istanbul to participate in the election collection, Erdogan told the OIC that the empathy and reaction exhibited by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern since the incident "should be an example to world leaders."

Earlier Friday, Ardern said that Peters had come to Turkey to "put the post straight" in the middle of the diplomatic row.

Earlier this week, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison called Erdogan's comments "deeply offensive", but on Thursday he said progress had been made and "we have already seen moderate of the President's views."

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No other Heads of State or Government attended the OIC's collection, which groups Muslim countries together to protect the interests of the Muslim world. It met Friday to discuss Islamophobia and New Zealand shooting.

Relationships have generally been good between Turkey, New Zealand and Australia, with thousands traveling to Turkey each year to celebrate soldiers in ANZAC Army Corps who died in Gallipoli just over a century ago.

"We return to New Zealand with a grateful assurance that our people coming here to celebrate ANZAC will be as welcome as they always were," Peters said.